Scotland’s last oil refinery is to close with the loss of more than 400 jobs despite assurances from Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband, giving the lie to claims about Net Zero jobs and a “just transition”. The Telegraph has more.
When Sir Keir Starmer visited Scotland days after becoming Prime Minister, he sought to reassure workers at the Grangemouth oil refinery by claiming that saving their jobs was a top priority.
What has happened since then, however, has been far from comforting.
After learning their jobs were at risk in December 2023, employees at the PetroIneos refinery in Falkirk – which produces 80% of Scotland’s petrol – were told last September that the site would close with the loss of more than 400 jobs.
Bosses blamed the decision on the costs of operating Scotland’s last refinery, as well as Britain’s plan to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035.
Still, many employees were left stunned. As well as Sir Keir, both Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, and Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, had given strong assurances they would seek to save the sprawling facility, which has been a fixture in Grangemouth since 1924.
“I think everyone was shocked that the announcement came when it did,” says “Jack”, an employee who started as an apprentice at the refinery and has been there for more than a decade.
The worker, who does not want to give his real name, adds: “The refinery has been around for more than 100 years and it’s part of the community.
“There are people who are the third or fourth generation of their family to work there, others who have been there for 40 years.
“Lots of people here saw it as a job for life, and Labour had said that oil and gas was still going to be around for a long time. So it’s been very worrying – and there’s a lot of anger and frustration.”
The episode has raised troubling questions about the Government’s repeated promises of a “just transition”, where no workers in the oil and gas industry will be left behind as Britain phases out fossil fuels in favour of green energy.
Sir Keir has repeatedly vowed that Labour will not repeat the Thatcher government’s “callous” decision to shut down Britain’s remaining coal mines in the 1980s without ensuring workers had alternative jobs to go to.
“The effects of that are still felt in communities across the country and never, ever again must we make that mistake,” the Prime Minister said in a 2023 speech.
Yet if Grangemouth is the first big test of this policy, local people say the Government is failing badly.
Cliff Bowen, a union convenor for Unite who has worked at Grangemouth for 30 years under Ineos and the site’s former owner BP, is furious about the failure to prevent the refinery’s demise and the lack of action to provide it with an alternative future.
What particularly angers his members, he says, is that the closure will not even dent overall global carbon emissions, of which the UK makes up less than 1%.
Now, Ineos and its partner PetroChina have said the site will become an import terminal for bringing in refined fuels from abroad.
“The reason we ended up with final closure is because there’s not been any political will to get behind it,” says Bowen.
“If you can’t get a just transition at Grangemouth, you have no chance elsewhere. No chance. Because what else is it you’re looking for? We’ve got the skills, we’ve got the geography, we’re blessed with the resources.
“But what we’re going to do is just completely and utterly give all that up on the back of some campaign, this altar of net zero that they all seem to worship in government – with no plan for jobs.”
He adds: “Why would you continue to import from foreign regimes and prop up their economies, to the destruction of your own communities?”
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